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A new batch of extremely interesting Bentham manuscripts has just been made available on the Transcription Desk. Box 121 contains a great deal of interesting material relating to Bentham‘s panopticon prison scheme, or rather its failure. This batch of manuscripts, composed mostly in 1802, illustrate Bentham’s anger and sense of betrayal towards the British legislature which, despite having passed the 1794 Penitentiary for Convicts Act, failed to build Bentham’s prison. In Bentham’s eyes, the panopticon had been thwarted by the failure to find a site, first at Battersea Rise, thanks to the opposition of George Spencer (the 2nd Earl Spencer), and then at Tothill Fields owing to the opposition of Richard Grosvenor (1st Earl Grosvenor). Thanks to the vested interests of landlords, Bentham ended up purchasing a small and boggy site at Millbank, and became aware that politicians had little real commitment to the panopticon.

In June 1803, after a campaign of many years, it was clear that the panopticon was to be abandoned. The scheme’s failure was the greatest disappointment of Bentham’s life: ‘They have murdered my best days’, he remarked. The experience left him incensed at the treachery of British politicians, and he turned his attention to detailing their perfidy. According to Bentham, the 1794 Penitentiary Act was for no ‘better or other intention than of serving as a bait for gulling me out of money’’, and in JB/115/145/001, he wrote:

‘My hairs, already grey, are pointing to the grave. It remains for me to try whether my country be as devoid of faith and feeling, as those whom the jumble of events has given to it for its rulers … It may then be said—simple neglect would have been sufficient: disappointment and ruin, at the end of five years of treachery and oppression, were too much’.

Box 121 contains some of Bentham’s angry outpourings, in an unpublished text entitled A Picture of the Treasury under the Administration of the Rt. Hon. W. Pitt and the Rt. Hon. H. Addington with a sketch of the Secretary of State’s Office under the reign of the Duke of Portland. Written in 1802 and 1803, this is a near-contemporary account of Bentham’s dealings with men in high office, albeit one told from Bentham’s point of view. (From the other side, Charles Long, the junior secretary to the Treasury, came to hate the sight of Bentham hanging around the Treasury, waiting to attempt meetings with him).

It was perhaps during this period that Bentham fully developed the idea of ‘sinister interests’ – that legislators did not necessarily act in the interests of the happiness of those they ruled, but rather to satisfy their own vested interests. By transcribing this set of manuscripts, you will be going some way to exploring this theory, and the timing of Bentham’s conversion into a political radical, convinced of the need for a representative parliament with universal adult suffrage. It seems likely, as Prof. Philip Schofield contends, that it was ‘the panopticon experience which began to convince him [Bentham] that nothing worthwhile could be achieved through the existing political structure in Britain’. (Schofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, Bew York, 2009, pp.12-13).

We hope that you enjoy exploring this rich material, and will be happy to help with any questions you may have!

Overall: 35% of the 5,580 manuscripts uploaded to the website have been transcribed thus far.

Boxes 96 and 27 saw the most activity this week.

You may also notice from the above that we have been able to sign off our first box of material as complete, though this is a little bit of a cheat. Earlier in the week we locked all of the manuscripts belonging to Box 139, apart from those on which transcription had already begun, as a Bentham Project editor has recently finished transcribing the material for a forthcoming Collected Works volume. There are a handful of transcripts from this box needing to be completed, but otherwise we can consider it finished (albeit unofficially!)

To provide an idea of the volume of work which volunteers have thus far contributed to Transcribe Bentham, we conservatively estimate that the ‘average’ manuscript contains 250 words – though some can be up to a couple of thousand words long. On this assumption, contributors to the project have cumulatively transcribed 485,000 words since September 2010. This is an astonishing level of work.

Thanks, as ever, to all those who have contributed this week, and for their efforts towards Transcribe Bentham‘s continuing success.

Two new boxes of material have just been uploaded to the Transcription Desk for volunteers to Transcribe.

Box 62 consists of material largely written in French, mostly composed in 1795 and related to Bentham’s penal code. Those looking for a challenge may find it in this box! The final twenty folios of Box 62 are in English, and deal with the interesting topic of tattooing.

Box 97 is a very different beast. Much of it is taken up by writings on legislation, but it also includes outlines and descriptions of many other of Bentham’s works. The final two folios are in Italian. Volunteers looking for relatively short manuscripts to transcribe will find this box to be of particular benefit.

We have around another half-a-dozen boxes to be uploaded in the coming weeks, which will include more writings on the penal code and punishments, the economy, and manuscripts relating to his 1802 publication, Panopticon versus New South Wales.

As regular readers know, the award-winning Transcribe Bentham Transcription Desk was programmed and put together by a highly-talented team at the University of London Computer Centre, led by Richard Davis. Those who are thinking about crowdsourcing their own manuscript collection will no doubt be interested to learn that Richard has recently made available the code for the Transcribe Bentham MediaWiki plugins here. They comprise the transcription toolbar, support for TEI markup, and support for viewing images. There are accompanying instructions on how to make the code work, and details of other plugins used to produce the Transcription Desk.

To use these plugins, you – or someone on your team – must be familiar with the installation and setting up of MediaWiki on a web server. You should also be prepared for the possibility that some settings within the code are specific to Transcribe Bentham, and be able to reconfigure them for your own purposes.

You may wish to consult Richard’s instructions which will no doubt prove far more helpful than this blogpost. We hope the plugins will be of use to those wishing to use them!

Almost 600 transcripts produced by Transcribe Bentham volunteers have now been uploaded to the repository, and are viewable. Volunteers may also be interested to note that it is also possible to search for transcripts upon which they have worked. Using the ‘advanced search‘ option, simply select ‘Bentham Collection’ from the drop-down ‘select collection’ menu, type the volunteer’s username or surname into the first text field, click the button to its left, and press ‘go’. Volunteers will then be presented with a list of transcripts in which they have had a hand.

As more transcripts are added and more data can be searched, so the value of this resource grows. The project team are again extremely grateful to volunteers for producing 1,433 transcripts – 1,193 (83%) of which are complete – since the project began last September. We estimate that to date volunteers have cumulatively transcribed – at a conservative estimate – at least 350,000 words.

Volunteer’s efforts are assisting in the production of the new Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham and, through the digital repository, widening access to the collection and ensuring its long-term preservation for all. More transcripts will be added to the repository in due course, so watch this space.

Thanks again to UCL Library’s IT Service team for uploading the transcripts and hosting the collection.